The road to character

Call it my Lego epiphany. For many months my 10-year-old son
has been building Lego ships. Then one day he started to hit
me with questions about hulls, torpedoes and naval maneuvers
like "crossing the T." Then he asked me about the Battle of
the Denmark Strait and other World War II battles. And
suddenly, there we were, talking about courage, loyalty and
sacrifice.

As I studied some history with him, I found it unimaginable
to describe the heroics of the British pilots and seamen who
sunk the mighty German Bismarck May 27, 1941, without
resorting to a distinctly moral vocabulary of the inner life.
My son gets it. He hungers for moments to go deeper than
Legos: to study character.

And yet, as New York Times columnist and political
commentator David Brooks proposes in his newly released
The Road to Character, we have made a de facto
decision as a culture to consign "eulogy virtues" to the
dustbin, together with categories like sin, grace,
redemption, vice and suffering.

Brooks' epiphany came in his driveway a few years ago. He
happened upon a radio rebroadcast of "Command Performance"
from V-J Day (Aug. 15, 1945), a program broadcast to the U.S.
troops. One might anticipate some on-air chest-thumping on
that pivotal day. Instead, Brooks found an austerity-of-ego
inconceivable in our selfie age. "Today, though," said Bing
Crosby on the program, "our deep-down feeling is one of
humility." Another added, "I hope that in victory we are more
grateful than proud."

We live in a tension between "Adam I" and "Adam II," Brooks
explains, borrowing the terms from Rabbi Joseph
Soloveitchik's 1965 "Lonely Man of Faith." "Majestic" Adam I
wants to "build, create, produce and discover things," while
"humble" and "internal" Adam II "wants to embody certain
moral qualities" and have a "quiet but solid sense of right
and wrong". "Adam I's motto is 'success,'" writes Brooks,
while "Adam II experiences life as a moral drama. His motto
is 'Charity, love and redemption.'"

In what Brooks calls the age of the "big me," we ignore Adam
II and opt instead for the "resume virtues" beloved by Adam
I. We under-cultivate our interior life and avoid reflecting
upon our sins and flaws as "crooked timber." Without the
unseen and quiet daily habits that build Adam II, Brooks
asserts, it is only a matter of time before we collapse from
within and meet our Watergate moment.

Raising children in the toxic culture of "me, me, me," I
found "The Road to Character" to be a winsome 275-page
examination of conscience and challenge to reclaim the "moral
ecology" that goes far deeper than the politics, economics or
other system of thought. It is so easy - and arguably
slothful - to hover at the flashy level of Legos and battles
and Adam I and forego our own cultivation of Adam II, not to
mention our need to invite others into that more profound
conversation.

"I was born with a natural disposition toward shallowness,"
admits Brooks. "I wrote this book not sure I could follow the
road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the
road looks like and how other people have trodden it." "The
Road to Character" became for Brooks something of a second
chance, a journey to "save his soul," as he puts it.

Through 10 biographical sketches - including St. Augustine,
Frances Perkins, A. Philip Randolph, Dwight Eisenhower,
George Marshall and Dorothy Day - Brooks takes us on a
journey of the inner life. Forget the nonsense about "follow
your passion" and "build on your strength." We glimpse how
these individuals instead engage in a lifelong confrontation
with what Brooks call their unique "core sin."

For the Catholics he profiles, faith imbues and orders their
inner lives. Their struggles both humanize and ennoble our
own - even as our pursuit of "resume virtues" at the expense
of our inner life is revealed as the shortsighted escapade
that it is.

"We live in a society that encourages us to think about how
to have a great career," writes Brooks, "but leaves many of
us inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life."
Brooks breaks through the "shale" of majestic Adam I and hits
the "bedrock" of quiet Adam II.

First, read it. Then, if you have one family member, friend
or colleague in your life with whom you've never really
talked "eulogy virtues" or the life of Adam II, you could do
far worse than to send him or her a copy.

A road - a new horizon - may open in your friendship. And you
just might have the privilege of moving from Legos to what
matters most.

Johnson, a husband and father of five, is Arlington Bishop
Paul S. Loverde's special assistant for evangelization and
media. He can be reached on Twitter @Soren_t.